Grand Banks Capuchin

In the harbor of Brittany's St. Malo last week a trim, white two-masted ketch named St. Yves rocked at her moorings. In a hall in Paris a hulking, brown-eyed, brown-bearded Capuchin monk thundered sailor talk at an audience of 500. This week Father Yvon ("Little Yves") was to board the St. Yves, embark on his fourth voyage as chaplain of France's Grand Banks fishing fleet.

Father Yvon's career as a man of God goes no further back than the War, in which he, a simple Breton from Douarnenez, began fighting as a private, finished as an infantry lieutenant scarred by eleven wounds. After the armistice he entered the Capuchin novitiate, preached to Communist fishermen on the quays of St. Malo, soon became superior of a monastery near Dinard. This tranquil office the robust, jolly Capuchin renounced for the immensely practical missionary work carried on in the French fishing fleets since 1895 by the Societe des Oeuvres de Mer. Father Yvon's calling cards now read: "Address from April 20 to Sept. 15 on the Grand Banks and Greenland."

Thirty years ago the French Grand Banks fleet comprised 12,000 fishermen. It now numbers 4,000, manning 30 steam trawlers which set out last month, 30 schooners which set sail last fortnight. The Church bestows its most solemn blessings on the fleet, with full consciousness that some of the boats may never return from the North Atlantic. Although the death toll diminishes steadily, last year four schooners were lost. Of the seven ships which have successively been sent out by the Societe des Oeuvres de Mer, two have foundered.

Husky, brown-robed Father Yvon, 45, thinks of himself as cure of "the world's largest parish," extending across the Atlantic from Brittany to Greenland, thence south to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Besides the 4,000 Breton fishermen, his parishioners include 1,500 Portuguese and some Faroe Islanders. Resting last week at the Dinard monastery after a lecture tour in which his Paris appearance was the last of 60, the good cure delayed his departure only in order to fetch the fleet its first batch of mail. Later, with the St. Yves plying between the Banks boats and St. Pierre-Miquelon and Godthaab in Greenland, Father Yvon will bring more mail and necessary supplies. Officially the St. Yves is a hospital ketch, equipped for surgical operations. It also contains an altar, but many a day Father Yvon packs up his holy vessels, pulls on rubber boots beneath his Capuchin robe, sets out over rough seas in a dory to different fishing boats. Passing out cigarets to seamen, fishermen, cabin boys, he changes into his priestly vestments, celebrates mass on an altar improvised from planks reeking with gutted fish.

What Father Yvon wants most, he told French audiences last week in his rough-&-ready sailor's voice, is up-to-date radio equipment whereby he can pick up and rebroadcast to the whole fleet news, storm warnings, musical entertainment.

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